Their dark skin, their gender, their economic status--none of those were acceptable excuses for not giving the fullest rein to their imaginations and ambitions.

Women, on the other hand, had to wield their intellects like a scythe, hacking away against the stubborn underbrush of low expectations.

They turned their desks into a trigonometric war room, poring over equations scrawling ideas on blackboards, evaluating their work, erasing it, starting over.

For twelve school years, every morning, she had turned left out the front door to get to work. Now the taxi turned right, spiriting her off in the opposite direction.

There was virtually no aspect of twentieth-century defense technology that had not been touched by the hands and minds of female mathematicians.

West Virgina never left Katherine's heart, but Virginia was her destiny.

Expertise in a subfield was the key to a successful career as an engineer, and expertise was becoming a necessity for the mathematicians and computers as well.

Your life is made up of your dreams and your realities, your expectations and your possibilities.

We must conquer life by living it to the full, and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige.

Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought poor.

I prefer you like this, when you're in a foul mood, because you tell the truth.

A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do

Never accept evil as something you must walk with, something you deserve.

You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying.

I’ve discovered that if I don’t take the first step, God generally won’t reveal the next step.

That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.

Most national correspondents will tell you they rely on stringers and researchers and interns and clerks and news assistants.